


You Don't Have to Go Home, but You Can't Stay Here

by failsafe



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Fever Dreams, Foreshadowing, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 20:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11974548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: The people Zuko has been chasing all this time are already in his head.





	You Don't Have to Go Home, but You Can't Stay Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silveradept](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/gifts).



 

Iroh knows, senses – he does not wish to flatter himself when he thinks ' _ better than most _ ' – the kind of affliction which plagues his nephew. That does not stop it from being terrifying. His nephew has always been a fighter, and he has always been on the defensive. The fever that burns through him now is not entirely unlike the fever which had wracked through his body when his scar was fresh, new, still a grave, recent burn on his skin. That had been physical; this is not. Yet, the effects mirrored each other in a way that makes Iroh see the little boy, harmed and then cast out, all over again. 

There are moments of respite, though. Iroh knows well enough that this is a spiritual sickness. He also knows that watching Zuko every moment without getting any rest himself is likely to draw him into a similar stupor himself. He could drive himself crazy, trying to give cool water to the young man every time he twitches in his unnatural sleep. He does not. He waits until the time seems right.

During this patient watchfulness, Iroh notices when Zuko seems to rest almost peacefully. There are moments, here and there, when the erratic breathing, the shivering, the beads of sweat upon his brow, all calm down and nearly clear away. Then, Zuko screws up his brow and they are upon him. Iroh wonders what visions might be playing out in Zuko's mind – if those that bring him peace are the most important or those which cause him great pain, of one kind and then another. 

* * * 

It is bad enough that Zuko must tolerate these living and  _ working _ conditions. He was never meant for anything like this – a failing, miserable tea shop in Ba Sing Se. And yet, he will not leave Iroh again over something so small. He remembers the sick, dizzy hunger pangs he had experienced on his own. At least he does not have that particular indignity to worry about here. 

Only, his stomach does gnaw a little at itself. He slips aside and – in exactly the portion and way his uncle had taught him, insisted, because he will not have Iroh cast out on the street when he is so nearly happy here – portions out a little bit of the shop's food for himself. There had been a time when he might have turned his nose up at the strange spices, a little bland and lingering for his taste, but after animal feed almost anything is acceptable for a day, and then another, and another. 

He begins to fill his mouth but hardly has time to taste anything before he hears a loud, familiar, entirely grating sound fills his thoughts. 

“Hello, Ba Sing Se!” it says. 

Zuko winces. What is  _ he _ doing here? He grumbles and takes another suddenly even more tasteless bite of food. 

“Finally, a place to get something real to eat. No more nuts.” 

Zuko abandons his food, suddenly less interested in it and more interested in going to make his presence known. He wonders if – his head lances with pain for a second and he almost recoils in his own step – he wonders if the Water Tribe  _ boy _ has the Avatar with him. He moves purposefully back out to  _ receive this new guest _ . His jaw sets, teeth grinding. 

“Can I _help you_?” he asks, sly and full of venom. 

Who does he think he is? Coming in here like this and sounding so unafraid, so much like he belongs in this place. Zuko is in hiding. Why shouldn't he be? 

“Oh, fancy seeing _you_ here,” Sokka says, tone extending out into a sing-song. He is completely fearless, and for a moment Zuko is ready to fight. Ready to put him in his place, even if it sets the entire place on fire. Sokka approaches. Zuko feels his skin prickle with air and ready, dangerous heat. “Listen, could I ask you for some advice? There's this girl, and—”

Zuko is so completely taken aback by the casual tone, the way Sokka of the Water Tribe of all people would come to him for something so  _ meaningless _ as that when they are completely opposed, opposite, and set against each other, that he realizes. He breathes sharply, hissing almost like something feral in his nostrils. Then, for a moment, he blinks his eyes. He sees a ceiling above him. His eyes burn with sweat. When they close – open – again, Sokka is gone. 

* * * 

He is cleaning – feverishly – sweat beading on his forehead and burning at the corner of one eye. He reaches up and wipes the sweat away with his sleeve. No matter what he does, the shop doesn't seem clean enough. He hears the door open behind him and doesn't look around. 

“We're closed,” he says, his voice low and hardly projecting from his throat. 

“I know. I don't want anything,” a polite, almost too-polite, soft voice says to him. He turns around, scowling. The Water Tribe girl who spends all her time with the Avatar, the girl whose necklace he had held onto for weeks – what would she be doing here? Especially if she 'doesn't want anything.' 

Zuko's eyes dart around, but he doesn't see anything that she could want. She doesn't have the Avatar, so she isn't even very important to any goal he might have, and he has no intention of attacking her. He is already  _ so warm _ . 

“That's a lie,” he accuses, flatly. He leans against the broom's handle, letting it take some of his weight, as he turns to her. 

She looks back at him, undeterred in her eye contact but with a hardening in their gaze. She is offended but not backing down. It seems like her, but really, what does he know about her? Why should he know anything? 

“Why would I lie to you?” she demanded as if she actually anticipated an answer. 

“Why would I lie to you?” Zuko echoes back at her. He means for it to come out with some bite that might send her away, but it sounds like a more earnest question than he should have allowed her to hear about anything. She is an ally of the Avatar, and the Avatar is an enemy of the Fire Nation. He needs to capture the Avatar and return him to his father to restore his honor. Even thinking it through makes him tired, now, though. Suddenly, the question sounding so honest seems a little less absurd. 

“I don't know, Zuko,” she replies after a few tense seconds. “Why would you lie to me? Am I more dangerous than your sister?” 

“You might be,” Zuko says, without thinking, and he is almost bitterly amused. 

“Zuko,” Katara says. 

“Why do you know my name? I'm nothing to you, now. I'm hardly even a prince of the Fire Nation anymore,” he grumbles. Then, his eyes are nearly as open as they will go as he looks away from her. He has made himself vulnerable, and why? 

“What does that matter? What does it matter whose son, whose daughter, we are? In this war, it comes down to our choices, now. Our grandparents saw the start of this war, and it has yet to stop.” 

“What point are you trying to make?” Zuko tries to ask in as unfriendly a tone as he can manage. Worse than anything he can or can't do, she only seems to look unimpressed with his attempts to remind her why she had once been frightened of him. It would be better if she were afraid. 

“That you and I aren't that different.” 

“We're the opposite,” Zuko insists, nearly recites from memory. He remembers the first time she had held her own against him and he had achieved the upper hand, at the top of the world. “You rise with the moon; I rise with the sun,” he echoes from that day. 

“And yet both of us have lost our mothers, and our fathers are far away, steering the course of a war where we are just two people, hidden away and running.” 

“Stop it!” Zuko insists. He is disappointed, hollow, when he finds that she does. 

* * * 

The momentary burst of cool air that runs like a natural breeze through the tea shop makes Zuko sigh. He can't immediately tell where it comes from, only that he needs it, desperately. He grits his teeth a moment after filling his lungs and exhaling. He goes about his duties, carrying them out with rigid determination that comes from having no other chance, no other hope, and nothing else to do. 

Then, the reason for the cool breeze makes itself known. 

Right in front of him, the Avatar appears, flopping down against the nearest surface and appearing to melt as much as he can while remaining solid. 

“Need... water,” he says, panting. His cheek rests against cool stone, dirtying an area Zuko feels he had only just cleaned. 

“This is a tea shop,” Zuko says, without thinking his answer through. 

“Water,” the Avatar says again.

Zuko frowns. The Avatar is weak now. Even if he had foregone all his chances until now, maybe this is it. Maybe he could craft a bargain, right here and now, that the Avatar could not refuse. Maybe, if the Avatar needs something he can give him, he can lead him away with no resistance at all. Maybe all hope is not lost. 

“Please,” the Avatar adds, and Zuko starts with guilt as he notices the hollow, warm, sweaty, flushed look on the boy's face. He is so young, and from this angle, without the volley of counterattacks coming at him, he notices. Suddenly, he feels phantom pain lance through the scar tissue on his face and he reaches up to touch just beneath it, protective, feeling for the radiating, sickening heat that had lingered there for a while – after. He cannot imagine Iroh having denied him water at that time. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees movement, and he senses that his uncle is there. 

“I can get you some water,” he says, sounding more begrudging than he feels as he goes to fetch cool water in a cup by itself. He brings it back to the Avatar – Avatar Aang – and he finds that he needs to help him hold the cup to his lips. Aang swallows, and then it seems like only a few seconds and a blink before he perks up again. 

The burst of air that brushes against Zuko's skin makes him breathe a sigh of relief. He grumbles in his throat for good measure. 

“I've helped you! Now why won't you—” Zuko stops. Why won't he _what_? The natural end to that sentence seems to be 'leave,' but he knows that it makes no sense to let the Avatar go. 

It makes no sense to let the Avatar go if he wants his honor, his rightful place, his title to mean anything except that he is a fugitive and a disgrace. And yet he has considered asking him to simply  _ go _ . 

Aang doesn't leave immediately, given the opportunity and more than enough warning for what the consequences might be if he stays around Zuko. Instead, Aang stills and peers at him, looking at him from where he has perched somewhere he is definitely not supposed to be sitting or perching. 

“You look sick,” Aang remarks, concern flickering across his face. 

“I'm not sick. You're—” Before he can argue, can reflect the image back onto the Avatar once more, he is briefly, fitfully, awake. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed your gift-fic! I kind of tried to give you both things we matched on for your ATLA prompt. The fact that Toph isn't present in Zuko's dreams of the Gaang isn't intended as any slight to her. It's just that Zuko hasn't had much contact with her yet by this point. In case it was not clear, this was set during the sequence when Zuko had a couple of symbolic dreams while having a feverish existential crisis just before the end of Book Two. I kind of wanted to portray the idea that he already has impressions of who these people are, what their relationships might be like if he let them in, but that this is a construct of his own mind even if there are some spiritual elements to it. However, I hope you have your own thoughts and that my musing isn't ruining anything you thought about it... Best wishes and happy GenEx! 
> 
> The title is from "Closing Time" by Semisonic which happened to be the song that came to mind when I was writing it. The title seemed apropos, if not the exact tonal quality of the song. It... sort of... fits?


End file.
